Diversion in the Strait

"The grasses and trees are all soldiers" is an old Chinese proverb denoting a state of extreme nervousness and a feeling that one is surrounded by enemies. Last week Red China was using this hemmed-in feeling to justify its troop buildup in Fukien province across from the Nationalist-held offshore islands of Matsu and Quemoy. The Reds have had heavy troop concentrations along the Formosa Strait for years, but by last week they had added an estimated 100,000 men, raising the total to about 450,000. Belligerently, Red China claimed that Chiang Kai-shek was "preparing for an invasion" of the mainland "with the support and encouragement" of the U.S. Blared the official Chinese Communist news agency: "All right, let them come and try."

In Warsaw, where the U.S. and Red China have had diplomatic contact in the past, the Chinese ambassador sought and received assurances from the U.S. ambassador that the U.S. would not support a Nationalist invasion of the mainland. But, said President Kennedy at his press conference, in the event of "aggressive action against Matsu and Quemoy . . . the U.S. will take the action necessary to assure the defense of Formosa and the Pescadores."

The Real Troubles. Actually, the whole affair was a bit of a grass menace on all sides. The Fukien buildup was real enough, but for the Kennedy Administration, which first leaked the reports about it to the press, it also provided a frontpage diversion from the troubled economy. More significantly, on Red China's part, talk of an unlikely invasion from Formosa was a big smoke screen that diverted the masses from China's domestic troubles and upheavals. For Chiang Kai-shek on Formosa, amphibious exercises by Nationalist troops and the calling up of reservists kept green his often repeated promise of returning in triumph to the mainland.

Hunger was still Red China's most pressing problem. Refugees from Canton reported that 800,000 of the city's population of 2,000,000 are being transferred to farm communes in an effort to increase agricultural output. Heavy industry in Kwangtung has come to a virtual standstill as plants have either shut down or are operating with only skeleton forces.

Heavy industrial output, down 35% in 1961, is still plummeting. Reason given in every case: "shortage of raw materials." Beggars are commonplace in Canton, and prostitutes, supposedly "reformed" by the government, are back in business. Black-marketing flourishes, and corruption among Communist cadres is rampant.

A Tale of Two K.s. Red China's economic dislocations are closely related to its dialectical split with the Soviet Union.

Though the two Communist powers now seldom indulge in public name-calling, thinly disguised ideological salvos still break the sullen silence. Recently Chinese dialecticians disinterred an ancient Marxist villain, Karl Kautsky, Austrian contemporary of Karl Marx, who was a moderate and Social Democrat--among the worst epithets in the Communist lexicon.

The attack was actually aimed at quite another Mr. K. Following the rules by which these games are played, it was possible to learn what the Chinese meant by substituting Khrushchev's name wherever Kautsky's was mentioned. "Kautsky robs Marxism of its revolutionary, living spirit," charged the Chinese. "He is a hidden opportunist. He does not preach revolution, does not carry on the wholehearted revolutionary struggle, and in order to avoid such a struggle resorts to the tritest, ultra-Marxist-sounding excuses." On a less rarefied plane, the widening split between China and Russia is also much in evidence. Diplomatically, Russia is actively engaged in containing China's expansionist policies and undermining its influence with Asian Communist parties.

The admission of Outer Mongolia to COMECON, Russia's ineffectual answer to the Common Market, was a slap in the face to the Chinese, who are not members and who had expected to exert a measure of control in Outer Mongolia's affairs. In Laos, Russia infuriated China by promoting a deal, however unsteady, with the U.S. and heralding it as "a major accomplishment." In India, Russia has supported Nehru's border war against Red China, first by providing small arms and helicopters for the swift movement of troops, most recently by offering the Indians supersonic MIG-21 jet fighters.

Russia last year cut its economic aid to China by 45%; total Chinese trade with Russia was down $650 million. Nor was China's economic plight helped when it had to put up hard currency for Canadian grains and British industrial imports. "Our socialist brothers are having many difficulties," a Soviet diplomat recently chortled in Washington. "And they are not over them yet--no, not for some time." Meanwhile, the U.S. is banking heavily on the breakup of the Communist "monolith." State Department officials, who a few years ago were gloomily talking of a "lifelong struggle" in the aftermath of Russia's space victories and the Castro revolution, now talk perhaps too optimistically in terms of "winning it all in this decade." Says one: "We need to hold the line with firmness and sweat out this decade. The Communists have a rotten empire, and it is crumbling."

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